Dragons Stun Marlins to earn Rematch with Rockford.

Written Friday November 16th at 9:00 PM

The Lake Orion Dragons Volleyball team are heading back to the State Final.

and a rematch is on the horizon with the team that beat them in 2011.

The Dragons came back from a two to one deficit to beat the Farmington Hills Mercy Marlins 20-25, 25-18, 25-27, 25-20, 15-13 on Friday night in the State Semifinals.

Second ranked Lake Orion (67-6-1) who is back in the State Final for the first time since 2011 will play eighth ranked Rockford on Saturday afternoon at 2 PM at the Kellogg Center in Battle Creek.

“It makes up for everything that happened from 2012 on. Not getting as far as we wanted to get, that win right there, probably nobody except for us thought we were going to pull it off. I mean they were the best team, Number One from start to finish this High School season. We knew if we were going to beat them, we would have to play pretty much close to perfect. We didn’t play close to perfect but we played pretty darned good and got it done, very proud of these guys” said Dragons coach Tony Scavarda during his press conference.

Lake Orion battled all night against the top ranked Farmington Hills Mercy.

The Marlins are a well-coached team under Loretta Vogel and has talented players in Jessica Mruzik, Emily Susitko, Logan Beyer, Kayla Shields, and Mallory Conrad.

They have beaten the Dragons three of the four times they met this season.

After the first set which, Lake Orion lost they started to gain momentum and then something changed.

The Dragons believed.

Farmington Hills Mercy whom had not lost a set since September 29th lost the second set and it became a dog fight ever since.

Lake Orion had an unbelievable game from Paige Briggs getting 43 kills and a 429 hitting average. Wren MaCaulay played great with 53 assists, 12 digs, and three aces. Ciara Livingway had 21 digs and five aces while Lauren Bell, and Kendall Robertson were huge as well.

The Dragons needed everyone to be on and they got it.

The officiating in the game was spotty at best and questionable on both sides. Both coaches voiced their displeasure during their respective press conferences.

Thoughts

This is a huge win for Scavarda and his team but he knows the job is not finished.

This will be the first meeting of the season between Lake Orion and Rockford.

It was the Rams that beat the Dragons in three in the State Finals in 2011.

I’m going to take a quote from Natasha Romanoff to Bruce Banner when he was the Hulk from the Avengers Age of Ultron. Romanoff said that the “job is not finished” and it’s not.

It will be interesting to see what happens.